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(gob  anb  tfjc  Rations 

Conbocatton  aobress  bp 

$otyn  £>d)olte  J15ollen 

Presibent  of  Eake  Jfotest  College 
JFitist  Presbpterian  Cfjurcf) 

Eake  JForesSt,  Sllinots 
September  27 
1914 
* 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 

AUG  1  o  1915 


PRESIDENT'S  OFFICE 


\ 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign  Alternates 


https://archive.org/details/godnationsOOnoll 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


Isaiah  xl:15:  Behold,  the  nations  are 
as  a  drop  of  a  bucket,  and  are  accounted  as 
the  small  dust  of  the  balance:  behold,  he 
taketh  up  the  isles  as  a  very  little  thing. 

17.  All  the  nations  are  as  nothing  before 
him;  they  are  accounted  by  him  as  a  thing 
of  nought,  and  vanity. 

John  xv :  12 :  This  is  my  commandment, 
that  ye  love  one  another,  even  as  I  have 
loved  you.  13.  Greater  love  hath  no  man 
than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for 
his  friends.  14.  Ye  are  my  friends,  if 
ye  do  the  things  which  I  command  you. 

17.  These  things  I  command  you,  that  ye 
may  love  one  another. 

“God  reigns,  and  the  government  at  Washington  still  lives” — 
that  was  the  calming  word  that  rang  out  in  the  powerful  voice 
of  James  A.  Garfield  over  an  excited  mob  in  New  York  City, 
maddened  and  terrified  by  the  news  that  Abraham  Lincoln  was 
assassinated.  The  whole  world  has  need  today  of  a  voice  of 
comfort  to  assure  it  that  God  has  not  abdicated,  that  His  gov¬ 
ernment  is  righteousness  and  peace  and  must  at  last  prevail.  Not 
in  the  memory  of  man  have  there  been  events  that  made  it  so 
hard  to  believe  that  even  the  wrath  of  man  can  be  made  to 
praise  God.  Yet  we  cannot  let  go  of  that  trust,  if  we  are  not 
to  despair  of  humanity. 

We  are  still  dazed  by  the  suddenness  and  the  overwhelming 
force  of  the  horrible  man-made  catastrophe  that  is  drenching 
Europe  with  tears  and  blood.  By  one  of  the  strange  ironies 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


of  destiny,  it  was  just  as  delegates  from  all  nations  were  moving 
toward  Vienna  for  a  great  World’s  Peace  Congress  to  be  opened 
by  the  Austrian  Prime  Minister,  Count  Berchtold,  that  this 
same  Count  Berchtold  sent  to  the  Servian  government  the  per¬ 
emptory  ultimatum  which  was  the  immediate  occasion  of  the 
greatest  war  in  the  world’s  history.  And  without  warning  the 
advocates  of  peace,  gathering  to  mark  and  to  assist  the  progress 
of  the  nations  toward  the  quiet,  judicial  settlement  of  inter¬ 
national  difficulties,  found  themselves  tossed  aside  and  stranded 
by  the  surge  and  sweep  of  a  general  mobilization. 

This  is  not  an  easy  time  for  the  pacifist.  All  the  ground 
he  has  gained  by  unremitting  toil  in  the  sympathies  and  con¬ 
victions  of  men  seems  suddenly  to  be  swept  from  beneath  his 
feet  by  the  tide  of  warlike  enthusiasm.  It  seems  as  if  the  fight¬ 
ing  beast  in  man,  quelled  so  long  by  reason  and  by  Christian 
feeling,  had  leaped  to  savage  control,  maddened  by  the  scent 
of  blood.  For  the  time  the  militarist  is  in  the  saddle,  and  the 
nations  of  Europe  have  put  their  fate  into  the  hands  of  their 
experts  in  destruction  and  slaughter.  When  these  have  done 
their  best  and  their  worst,  it  will  be  the  turn  of  the  statesmen 
to  determine  what  can  still  be  saved  of  order  and  civilization 
out  of  the  chaos  and  the  wreck.  Why  these  same  statesmen, 
who  must  be  wise  enough  some  day  to  carry  through  the  infinitely 
difficult  work  of  restoration,  could  not  have  found  a  way  at 
first  by  which  Christian  brethren  might  solve  their  problems 
without  the  chaos  and  the  wreck,  that  is  a  question  to  which  we 
seek  in  vain  for  a  reasonable  answer. 

Some  day,  we  may  be  sure,  history  will  pronounce  its  im¬ 
partial  verdict,  fixing  definitely  the  personal  responsibility  for 
the  most  destructive  crime  that  the  world  has  ever  seen ;  and 
when  that  time  comes,  just  as  surely  the  men  upon  whom  the 
guilt  shall  rest  will  be  branded  as  supremely  infamous  among 
the  miscreants  of  the  human  race.  The  great  change  in  the 
attitude  of  the  world  toward  such  a  figure  as  the  first  Napoleon 


[4] 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


suggests  the  sort  of  final  reputation  that  is  in  store  for  certain 
men  who  now  sit  in  high  places,  no  matter  what  may  be  their 
present  success  or  failure.  The  voice  of  the  people  and  the 
voice  of  God  will  not  hold  them  guiltless. 

It  would  be  hasty  and  unjust  for  us  to  attempt  at  this 
time  to  forestall  history  in  the  distribution  of  personal  blame 
for  the  horrible  results  of  this  huge  fratricidal  struggle.  But 
it  is  altogether  meet  that,  sobered  by  the  spectacle  of  the  agony 
of  our  brothers  across  the  sea — to  which  we  can  bring  no  present 
alleviation — we  should  in  the  quiet  of  our  own  security  try  to 
understand  what  meaning  there  is  in  this  catastrophe  for  just 
and  rational  men. 

For  many  years  the  professional  militarists  of  every  clime 
have  been  ridiculing  as  fond  and  futile  dreams,  as  impractical 
and  perilous  theories,  the  persistent  and  measurably  successful 
efforts  of  the  pacifists  to  substitute  decent  judicial  methods  in 
international  relations  for  the  ancient,  stupid  horror  of  war. 
No  doubt  most  men  would  say  offhand  that  events  in  Europe 
today  vindicate  the  judgment  of  the  militant  party  and  totally 
discredit  the  benevolent  propaganda  of  the  pacifist.  Superficially, 
there  is  something  quite  plausible  and  even  compelling  in  this 
view.  Nevertheless,  it  can  easily  be  proven  false.  This  very 
war  of  the  nations,  caused  by  the  dominance  of  the  military 
spirit  in  the  councils  of  the  nations,  is  itself  a  slashing  refutation 
of  the  ruling  political  ideas  of  the  militarist.  We  see  before 
our  eyes,  in  the  catacylsm  of  a  general  European  war,  the  utter 
collapse  of  three  fundamental  theories  that  have  dominated,  at 
least  since  the  days  of  Bismarck,  the  practical  politics  of  Europe. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  theory  of  “Armed  Peace.”  This 
is  the  favorite  child  of  militarist  politics.  It  is  familiar  to  us 
from  the  incessant  preachment  of  all  worshippers  of  the  big 
stick  for  forty  years.  There  can  be  no  safety  but  in  armaments. 
Be  so  strong  that  no  enemy  shall  dare  attack  you ;  thus  alone 
shall  you  be  safe  from  aggression  and  rest  secure  in  the  enjoy- 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


ment  of  the  inestimable  blessings  of  peace.  Fear  is  the  only 
dependable  deterrent  of  war;  see  to  it  that  all  men  shall  fear 
your  power.  Thus  ran  the  argument,  and  beguiled  by  it  the 
nations  of  the  world  have  for  many  years  been  spending  the 
best  of  their  substance  in  a  crazy  rivalry  to  create  each  an 
invincible  armament,  in  order  that  peace  might  be  preserved  by 
the  threat  of  armed  force.  And  now  the  priceless  boon  for 
which  the  peoples  bore  this  crushing  burden  has  after  all  been 
lost,  engulfed  in  a  flood  of  armies.  So  the  world  may  see 
clearly  what  the  pacifist  has  always  said,  that  fear  is  not  a 
deterrent,  but  an  active  and  immediate  cause  of  war.  You  need 
not  take  the  word  of  a  theorist  for  that,  but  read  the  elaborate 
official  apologies  of  the  very  chiefs  whose  saving  vision  of 
“armed  peace”  has  now  turned  to  a  grinning  mockery.  And 
in  so  far  as  these  official  white  books  make  their  confession  that 
fear  dictated  the  declaration  of  war,  they  tell  the  unimpeachable 
truth.  Austrian  fear  of  the  threatening  expansion  of  Slavic 
power  on  the  south,  Russian  fear  of  Austrian  aggression  toward 
the  Aegean  and  the  Black  Sea  if  Servia  were  crushed,  German 
fear  of  Russian  mobilization  and  the  Pan-Slavic  movement, 
French  fear  of  the  Prussian  mailed  fist,  Britain’s  fear  of  Ger¬ 
many’s  reaching  through  Belgium  the  straits  of  Dover,  and  be¬ 
hind  that  the  fear  of  German  commercial  and  naval  power — 
these  were  the  blind  forces  which  the  arbiters  of  the  destiny 
of  Europe  have  openly  confessed  themselves  powerless  to  resist. 
So  the  familiar  analogy  has  proven  accurate  to  the  end — the 
Christian  nations  of  Europe,  armed  to  the  teeth,  have  like  so 
many  truculent  cutthroats  swaggered  and  boasted  to  keep  their 
courage  up,  while  eyeing  each  other  with  anxious  suspicion, 
until  the  first  desperado  who  carried  the  dare  so  far  as  to  put 
his  hand  to  his  pistol  pocket  precipitated  immediate  mutual 
slaughter.  Verily,  the  stupid  militarist  theory  of  “armed  peace” 
is  dead  at  the  hands  of  its  makers.  May  its  ghost  never  rise 
again  to  deceive  and  to  coerce  and  to  impoverish  the  nations. 


[6] 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


The  second  theory  that  has  been  discredited  by  recent  events 
is  that  of  the  “Balance  of  Power,”  an  extension  of  the  doctrine 
of  armed  peace  and  the  saving  power  of  fear.  If  a  single  nation 
by  heavy  armaments  could  make  itself  practically  immune  from 
attack,  all  the  more  surely  could  a  defensive  combination  of 
strongly  armed  powers  be  a  guarantee  of  peace  to  these  powers. 
Hence  Bismarck’s  creation  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  binding  Ger¬ 
many,  Austria  and  Italy  together  to  guard  the  peace  of  Europe 
and  protect  the  fruits  of  the  successful  war  against  France  out 
of  which  had  emerged  a  united  and  formidable  German  Empire. 
But  that  was  also  a  game  at  which  other  nations  could  play, 
indeed,  must  play  if  their  peace  was  to  be  equally  safeguarded. 
Hence  the  defensive  alliance  of  France  with  Russia,  and  finally 
the  Triple  Entente  binding  these  nations  with  England,  to  which 
we  must  add  the  compact  recognizing  a  community  of  interest 
in  the  Far  East  between  Britain  and  Japan.  Here  was  then  a 
“balance  of  power”  most  cunningly  devised  to  make  the  very 
thought  of  war  impossible,  because  an  attack  upon  any  one 
nation  would  inevitably  involve  the  whole  of  Europe  in  war, 
and  no  conceivable  advantage  to  be  gained  by  fighting  would 
be  worth  that  staggering  price.  But  alas  for  the  wisdom  of  the 
wise  and  prudent!  Just  as  the  fear  and  suspicion  engendered 
between  the  nations  by  the  state  of  “armed  peace”  was  the  direct 
cause  of  hostilities,  so  the  alliances  creating  the  finely  reciprocal 
“balance  of  power”  made  the  conflagration  leap  in  a  day  from 
end  to  end  of  Europe,  and  presently  across  the  continents  to 
the  Yellow  Sea. 

The  third  theory,  strangely  inconsistent  with  that  just  men¬ 
tioned,  but  nevertheless  held  with  equal  fervor  by  the  rulers 
who  based  their  politics  upon  the  other,  is  the  theory  that  a 
nation  is  an  isolated  unit,  with  a  definite  personality,  justified 
in  acting  independently  in  the  use  of  force  to  gain  advantage  or 
revenge  or  to  vindicate  what  is  called  “national  honor.”  If  the 
other  theories  are  based  on  fear,  this  is  based  on  pride,  a  motive 


[7] 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


exactly  equivalent  to  the  peculiarly  vulnerable  sense  of  personal 
honor  that  reacted  upon  any  injury  in  the  duel  of  former  days, 
and  that  still  causes  the  feud  or  the  vendetta  in  semi-civilized 
countries.  According  to  this  theory  every  nation,  no  matter 
what  its  obligations  to  and  claims  upon  its  allies,  no  matter  how 
notorious  a  bully  in  its  relations  with  weaker  nations,  must  be 
the  sole  judge  of  its  own  cause  and  could  not  tolerate  any  inter¬ 
ference,  even  by  its  friends,  in  the  interest  of  international 
justice  and  world  peace.  It  is  plain  that  by  this  theory  the 
advantage  of  the  carefully  established  balance  of  power,  as  a 
guarantee  of  peace  between  the  nations  of  the  world,  was  utterly 
destroyed,  since,  after  all,  the  independent  and  arbitrary  acts  of 
any  one  nation  could  and  must  precipitate  a  war  in  which  all 
the  others  must  become  fatally  involved.  Recent  events  have 
shown  with  tragic  suddenness  how  false  and  ruinous  this  theory 
is, — how  inevitably  these  supposedly  individual  and  sovereign 
political  units  are  bound  up  with  and  dependent  upon  one  another, 
how  even  a  small  and  relatively  feeble  nation  running  amuck 
can  cause  world-wide  disaster. 

For  many  years  humane  and  patriotic  voices  raised  in  every 
nation  have  been  warning  the  world  of  the  criminal  folly  and 
falsity  and  peril  of  these  maxims  by  which  the  practical  politics 
of  all  the  great  and  little  powers  have  been  governed.  Some 
indeed  of  the  rulers  of  the  earth  have  heeded  the  warning  and 

made  valiant  efforts  to  stay  the  madness  of  international  mili¬ 
tarism;  but  to  little  effect.  It  is  the  story  over  again  of  the 

abolition  of  slavery  in  this  country.  Now,  as  then,  men  are 

learning,  at  a  cost  of  life  and  treasure  and  mutual  hatreds  too 
terrible  to  contemplate,  a  lesson  that  might  so  well  have  been 
learned  in  the  safer  and  infinitely  cheaper  ways  of  peace. 

Nothing  is  more  evident  in  the  light  of  present  events  than 
that  war  is  a  horrible  anachronism.  A  state  of  war  is  the 
direct  negation  of  all  modern  institutions.  War  annuls  repre¬ 
sentative  government.  Even  in  the  most  enlightened  and  demo- 


[8] 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


cratic  nations,  the  decisions  upon  which  war  hangs  are  in  the 
hands  of  a  very  few  men,  usually  of  men  who  are  the  chief 
representatives  of  the  military  tradition ;  and  once  the  battalions 
are  marching,  parliaments  become  mere  money-voting  adjuncts 
to  a  military  government.  War  crushes  labor  and  industry  and 
commerce.  At  its  first  impact  the  exchanges  of  the  world  are 
closed,  the  delicate  mechanism  of  the  world’s  financial  credit 
is  wrecked,  communication  and  travel  are  at  a  standstill,  and 
money,  that  most  representative  symbol  of  human  organization, 
loses  its  value.  The  nations  relapse  into  primitive  conditions, 
and  save  for  the  monstrously  effective  instruments  of  death  and 
destruction,  the  machinery  of  civilization,  built  by  the  cumulative 
effort  of  the  ages,  suddenly  ceases  to  operate. 

A  recent  cartoon  represents  the  pagan  and  barbaric  peoples 
of  the  earth  seated  about  the  arena  in  which  the  spectacle  of 
the  war  is  going  on,  jeering  at  the  “civilization”  that  tolerates 
such  fratricidal  strife,  gloating  over  the  Christian  nations  that 
are  rending  each  other  like  wild  beasts.  The  picture  tells  a 
true  story.  The  children  of  Japhet,  so  long  the  conquerors  and 
masters  and  leaders  of  the  world,  are  on  trial  before  God  and 
their  fellowmen.  Our  pride  and  our  past  achievements  will 
not  save  us.  We  may  forget,  in  our  insolence  of  dominant 
power,  that  to  God  “the  nations  are  as  a  drop  of  a  bucket  and 
as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance.”  If  we  prove  unfaithful  and 
unworthy,  God  has  resources  that  we  know  not  of.  Not  long  ago 
a  scientist  and  explorer  who  has  spent  years  among  the  primitive 
tribes  of  the  great  African  plateau  assured  us  earnestly  of  his 
conviction  that  these  splendid  specimens  of  black  manhood  were 
the  race  of  the  future,  destined  to  carry  the  burden  of  the  world’s 
advancement  when  we  Caucasians  in  our  senile  decrepitude  shall 
have  witnessed  the  decay  of  our  civilization.  That  sounds  like 
a  weirdly  improbable  dream  to  us  now,  but  it  is  no  stranger 
than  the  truth  of  past  experience.  Who  should  have  fancied,  in 
the  days  of  Pericles,  that  soon  the  world’s  capital  would  be  in 


[9] 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


Rome,  or  in  the  days  of  Augustus,  that  the  somber  barbarians 
of  the  Northern  forests  would  one  day  be  the  masters  of  science 
and  culture,  when  the  glory  of  imperial  Rome  should  be  but  a 
distant  memory?  “Be  not  deceived,”  says  a  warning  voice  echo¬ 
ing  divine  wisdom,  “God  is  not  mocked,  for  whatsoever  a  man 
soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap.”  We  know  that  the  men  who 
sow  the  wind  shall  reap  the  whirlwind,  no  matter  how  soft  upon 
their  lips  may  be  the  words  of  Christian  worship,  belying  the 
stubborn  pride  of  their  insolent  hearts,  mocking  the  Christian 
God.  “Not  everyone  that  sayeth  unto  me,  ‘Lord,  Lord’  ” — we 
hear  the  tone  of  Jesus  himself — “shall  enter  into  the  Kingdom, 
but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father  which  is  in  Heaven.” 
Is  our  splendid  Caucasion  experiment  a  failure,  like  the  earlier 
experiments  of  the  pagan  civilizations  that  have  piled  their  ruins 
one  above  the  other  ?  Or  shall  the  white  race  still  become  really 
converted  to  the  gospel  of  Jesus,  which  it  so  glibly  professes 
and  so  recklessly  ignores?  That  is  the  life  and  death  question 
for  our  civilization. 

Never  was  there  more  need  than  now  of  thinking  in  world 
terms  and  in  terms  of  eternity.  We  seem  to  have  fallen  upon  a 
time  of  strangely  parochial  narrowness  in  the  thoughts  of  men, 
a  time  when  empty  shibboleths  again  make  foes  of  brethren; 
and  that  is  all  the  stranger  because  for  the  first  time  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  world  it  has  become  one  neighborhood.  This  paro¬ 
chial  blindness,  this  unwillingness  to  heed  the  lessons  of  the  past 
or  to  enter  into  others’  point  of  view,  had  much  to  do  with 
the  breaking  out  of  hostilities.  The  rulers  of  the  nations  seem 
short-sighted  enough  to  believe,  and  with  fanatical  zeal,  that  the 
imaginary  lines  dividing  their  domains  have  a  permanent  validity, 
a  peculiar  sanction.  You  need  only  turn  the  pages  of  an  his¬ 
torical  atlas  to  see  at  once  how  childish  is  this  conviction,  as 
you  watch  the  boundaries  shift  and  flee  from  century  to  century. 
A  boundary  has  never  been  an  accomplished  fact,  but  always 
merely  a  fleeting  mark  of  temporary  political  alignments.  More 


[10] 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


vital  and  enduring  by  far  have  been  the  criteria  of  race,  religion, 
language,  traditions,  culture.  And  the  real  problem  of  civiliza¬ 
tion  is,  not  to  throw  the  net  of  one’s  national  boundary  over 
an  unwilling  and  rebellious  people,  but  to  give  every  race  of 
man  the  fullest  room  for  the  development  of  its  own  peculiar 
genius,  and  to  bind  together  all  men  of  whatever  name  and  place 
in  the  bonds  of  a  brotherhood  wherein  dwell  liberty  and  concord. 
It  may  well  be  that  the  finest  contribution  of  our  country  to 
the  civilization  of  the  world  is  to  be  an  object  lesson  of  unity 
amid  diversity,  of  peace  and  cooperation  and  mutual  respect 
among  men  who  here  have  been  freed  from  the  hatred-breeding 
trammels  of  their  more  parochial  homes  across  the  sea,  and  who 
have  learned  that  not  by  preying  upon  one  another,  but  by  help¬ 
ing  one  another,  they  realize  their  own  best  possibilities.  The 
old  American  motto  “E  pluribus  unum”  may  yet,  in  a  new 
sense,  become  the  rallying  cry  of  the  nations. 

You  may  well  ask  now  what  the  Christian  religion  has  to 
do  with  all  this.  Much  every  way,  or  rather  it  has  everything 
to  do  with  it.  Christianity  has  the  secret  of  the  solution  for 
the  age-long  problem  to  which  the  warring  nations  can  find  no 
answer.  For  Christianity  has  the  world-view,  the  eternal  truth, 
which  alone  can  lead  men  out  of  darkness  into  light.  Christianity 
is  not  a  racial  or  a  national  faith,  it  is  not  the  possession  of 
class  or  caste,  it  is  not  limited  in  time.  Its  principle  cuts  across 
the  ages  and  through  all  the  artificial  barriers  of  human  pride 
and  sovereignty.  Its  seat  is  not  on  a  throne  or  in  a  council 
chamber,  but  in  the  depths  of  the  soul  of  man.  Wherever 
Christian  truth  is  implanted  it  must  bear  the  same  essential 
fruit — “the  peacable  fruit  of  righteousness because  it  is  one 
seed,  springing  up  in  the  universal  soil  of  the  spirit,  and  through 
whatever  crust  of  race  or  habit  this  divine  plant  pushes  out  to 
the  sunlight,  the  name  of  its  flower  is  love. 

Jesus  must  reign,  in  the  councils  of  the  nations  as  well  as 
in  the  hearts  of  men,  for  he  has  shown  the  way  of  salvation 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


for  nations  as  for  individuals,  and  no  man  has  found  another 
way.  For  the  last  time,  let  us  fervently  hope,  Christian  peoples 
are  making  a  frenzied  experiment  of  the  other  way,  and  already 
the  world  shudders  at  the  result.  There  is  no  other  safety — 
the  way  of  fear  and  of  pride  must  be  forsaken  and  the  nations 
must  learn  the  meaning  of  the  gospel  they  profess.  There  is  one 
cure;  we  know  that  it  is  love  alone  that  casts  out  fear,  and  that 
leaves  no  place  for  pride. 

Some  men  have  said,  in  the  terror  of  their  hearts  over  the 
awful  events  of  the  present  day,  that  Christian  civilization  seemed 
to  be  on  the  verge  of  ruin.  We  need  have  no  such  apprehension. 
In  a  way  the  reverse  is  true.  It  is  precisely  because  the  nations 
have  failed  to  cultivate  a  Christian  spirit  in  their  relations  to 
each  other  that  they  are  now  at  each  others’  throats.  What  we 
are  now  witnessing  is  the  disastrous  failure  of  the  pagan  world- 
politics  that  have  remained  as  a  perilous  survival  of  barbarous 
days  into  the  days  when  men  in  their  private  relations  have 
long  accepted  the  Christian  way,  at  least  as  the  ideal  toward 
which  they  strive. 

And  now  it  is  time  to  ask,  what  after  all  can  you  and  I 
do  in  this  great  matter  that  involves  the  welfare  of  the  world? 
How  pitifully  impotent  we  seem!  If  we  were  over  there  in 
the  midst  of  the  distraction  and  the  terror,  we  could  only  flee 
for  our  homes  and  be  eagerly  gratefuly  to  pay  our  last  dollar 
for  steerage  passage  back  to  a  land  of  peace.  And  being  here 
in  safety,  what  can  we  do  but  wring  our  hands  in  helpless  horror 
as  the  truth  leaks  out  through  censored  dispatches?  But  if  we 
are  impotent  now,  in  the  immediate  crisis,  we  can  do  much  in 
the  long  run.  For  after  awhile,  when  the  present  feverish  pas¬ 
sion  is  burned  out,  men  will  begin  to  think  again,  and  what  men 
think  will  determine  the  destiny  of  the  world.  We  cannot  meas¬ 
ure  today  the  influence  that  this  country  may  have,  the  one  great 
Western  nation  left  unscarred  by  the  cruel  sufferings  of  war. 
Perhaps,  as  some  say,  the  United  States  may  through  this  war 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


gain  the  commercial  and  financial  leadership  of  the  world.  But 
it  is  infinitely  more  important  that  American  ideals  of  liberty 
and  peace  shall  do  their  missionary  work  than  that  American 
ships  shall  cover  the  seven  seas.  It  is  vastly  and  eternally  im¬ 
portant  that  you  and  I,  as  American  citizens  in  this  crisis  of 
our  history,  should  think,  not  lies,  but  truth,  not  in  terms  of 
hatred  and  suspicion,  but  of  faith  and  love.  You  and  I  must 
think  and  live  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus  if  we  are  to  do  our  part 
toward  building  up  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  Let  no  one 
say  that  the  gospel  doesn’t  “work.”  Nothing  else  does  work. 
That  which  is  won  by  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword,  be¬ 
cause  it  has  in  it  the  seed  of  destruction;  that  which  is  born 
of  love  shall  endure  forever,  because  it  expresses  the  very  nature 
of  the  Eternal  God. 

It  is  a  sad  anticlimax,  is  it  not,  to  descend  from  the  awful 
argument  in  which  the  fate  of  nations  is  being  decided,  to  the 
petty  details  of  your  life  and  mine,  in  this  quiet  village,  in  the 
plodding  daily  routine  of  school  and  college?  But  we  forget 
again  that  God  does  not  so  judge.  To  him  the  nations  are  as  a 
drop  of  a  bucket  and  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance,  and  yet 
not  a  sparrow  falls  without  his  care;  to  him  a  thousand  years 
are  but  as  a  day,  and  one  day  as  a  thousand  years.  Christianity 
searches  the  heart;  it  is  the  principle  that  matters,  not  the  acci¬ 
dental  size  of  the  manifestation.  Jesus  has  little  to  say  of  monu¬ 
mental  crimes  on  a  national  scale;  but  he  warns  us  solemnly 
that  he  who  hates  his  brother,  or  despitefully  uses  him,  is  in 
danger  of  the  gehenna  of  fire.  The  smallest  neighborhood,  a 
single  family,  may  have  in  it  the  same  destructive  hatred  and 
fear  and  suspicion  that  is  today  making  a  hell  of  Europe;  or 
it  may  harbor  the  heavenly  visitant  whose  presence  is  joy  un¬ 
speakable.  What  is  your  spirit?  Is  it  a  spirit  of  faction,  of 
grasping  selfishness,  of  lazy  indifference?  Or  is  it  the  spirit 
of  cooperation,  of  generous  rivalry  in  fine  things,  of  eager  inter¬ 
est  in  the  promotion  of  the  common  good?  Is  it  the  spirit  of 


[  13] 


GOD  AND  THE  NATIONS 


Jesus  Christ?  Then  shall  his  joy  be  in  you,  and  so  your  joy 
shall  be  complete.  “This  is  my  commandment/’  says  our  Master, 
“that  ye  love  one  another,  even  as  I  have  loved  you.  Greater 
love  hath  no  man  than  this,  that  he  lay  down  his  life  for  his 
friends.”  The  way  of  self-giving — that  is  the  one  way  to  self- 
realization. 


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